This past week flew by like an arrow. I just completed Hack Reactor week 1 (wohoo)! There are lots of stuff I learned from this past week. Here is the quick review of what I experienced in week 1.

1. Awesome people: People at Hack Reactor are super cool. From lecturers, staff, to seniors and same cohort peers, everyone is so passionate and caring. The energy in the environment really motivates me to be as awesome as others.

You know how I researched coding bootcamps and the reason I chose Hack Reactor from here. I applied for four bootcamps in the Bay Area, and this post is about my application experience.

I finalized my application list to these four bootcamps: Hack Reactor, Dev Bootcamp, RocketU, and Coding Dojo. Because Hack Reactor was on the top of my list, I first went through Coding Dojo and RocketU’s applications (to practice and prepare myself).

From my previous post, you know I am going to a coding bootcamp called Hack Reactor. However, how do you find a right bootcamp that fits you? Before I applied to any bootcamp, I researched through Google and Quora to find people’s reviews about bootcamps. There are also websites that collect bootcamp information by city, focus, reviews, etc. Here are the websites I know: Bootcamp Finder, Bootcamper, Switch Up, Course Report. Jeff’s blog post, How to Compare Bootcamps, also helped me decide my list of bootcamps to apply.

I haven’t written any blog post for a while and now it’s 2015 already! I can’t believe time flies so fast!! There are lots of changes I faced in the end of 2014, and in 2015 I will have a totally different lifestyle.

The biggest change is I am going back to school…well sort of. It’s a coding school(bootcamp) called Hack Reactor. In the second half of 2014, I felt I wanted to learn programming in a more systematic way. Therefore, I researched all kinds of possibilities like CS master program, CS undergraduate, online certified classes, Udacity CS master program, etc. The biggest concern I had was the time it will take. Quitting my job to study 2~4 years seems a little terrifying for me. In addition, I want to learn while doing lots of practical projects. Some of the programs seemed as if they would only focus on the theory part.